The results of this year's awards were awaited with some some trepidation in the SF community, due to well-documented attempts by some controversial authors to game the voting system. These tactics appear to have been largely unsuccessful, as this is the fourth major award for the Leckie novel, which had already won the 2013 BSFA, 2013 Nebula and 2014 Clarke awards.

Ancillary Justice has its merits but read like an first novelist's smart attempt at crossing Alistair Reynolds with Iain M. Banks. Indeed, all three can/could do with good editors to tidy the worst longeurs. There's a little too much fashion sometimes; I rate Phillip Mann's The Disestablishment of Paradise as the strongest sf novel I've read in the past year, stylistically, structurally, thematically and in its characterisation and humour; it betters the Leckie IMO but only made one of the shortlists.

Ancillary Justice has its merits but read like an first novelist's smart attempt at crossing Alistair Reynolds with Iain M. Banks. Indeed, all three can/could do with good editors to tidy the worst longeurs. There's a little too much fashion sometimes; I rate Phillip Mann's The Disestablishment of Paradise as the strongest sf novel I've read in the past year, stylistically, structurally, thematically and in its characterisation and humour; it betters the Leckie IMO but only made one of the shortlists.

[/. Member, AC due to travel]

Interesting, but as an annoying sidelight that is altogether too common:

HOWEVER!! The Kindle version which I received was full of typos, missing letters and missing words. There were enough mistakes that it passed through annoying and actually affected my ability to follow the story. To their credit the publisher contacted me directly to apologise and asked for examples of mistakes. I've provided some examples but have not heard back, nor do I know how to verify that current versions of the Kindle book have been fixed.

I hate that. How hard is it to copy something into a machine readable format that started out in machine readable format. What do they do, running through Slashdot's filters?

HOWEVER!! The Kindle version which I received was full of typos, missing letters and missing words. There were enough mistakes that it passed through annoying and actually affected my ability to follow the story. To their credit the publisher contacted me directly to apologise and asked for examples of mistakes. I've provided some examples but have not heard back, nor do I know how to verify that current versions of the Kindle book have been fixed.

I don't recall any formatting issues in the version I read.
In the past I bought a (self published, I think) Kindle book that was poorly formatted and Amazon refunded it immediately.

...it's an attempt to protest the forces of political correctness (represented by Wiscon's radical feminist faction) who are attempting to get people fired [fantasticalandrewfox.com] for not toeing the line.

BTW, you might not have noticed, but three of the five nominees for the Hugo novels this year were published by Orbit Books, in London. The ideology that marked them was "Hey, we don't want to lose book sales by giving away free copies in the voting packet, let's just do excerpts!" Correia's trilogy was published by Baen, and the Wheel Of Time series, 15-or-so volumes, which got nominated as a single work, was published by Tor, both of whom included the entire sets, which I liked much better. (In Correia

Sorry, I'm a Libertarian, from a relatively conservative background (which is not at all the same thing as a right-wing background, so I guess I was the "wrong" type of conservative for you), and I'd much rather read good writing by somebody whose politics I disagree with than bad writing. There are writers who really need gatekeepers to keep them from wasting my time, and there are good writers who still need editors to rein them in (how did Neal Stephenson get to burn a Baroque Cycle worth of paper?) or

Orson Scott Card is proof that ideology doesn't stop you from winning Hugos. All that is necessary is to write something interesting and mind-blowing. Writing formulatic space operas that are basically 1950's Don Pendleton manly war-fighting men set in space rather than in the wilds of darkest Africa or Southeast Asia is not the sort of thing that gathers awards, those have been done so many times that they're mind candy, something entertaining if in a certain mood but hardly mind blowing. Neither are fifte

[Citation Needed]The only shithole that has been expelled was done so because he used SFWA channels for his own racist propoganda. Until then he was still a member of the SWFA while being an active obnoxious asshole.

If you're attempting to say successful and best-seller writers like Scalzi and co. are "amateurs", I think youre more than deluded.

"Largely unsuccessful" is a bit of an understatement. Those who follow such things have been rejoicing that the "Sad Puppy Slate" ended up last in all the author categories, and that the novella by Vox Day, the guy with very... questionable political and personal views, actually ended up below "No Award". I think it's interesting that despite the outcries and rage and threats about "No Awarding" the entire slate, the only nominee to actually meet such a fate was the one that almost everyone agreed was literarily a piece of garbage.

One does have to wonder how the "Sad Puppy Slate" would have done if it hadn't weighed itself down with a nominee that was simultaneously so objectionable and so poorly written.

Yes, they are. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been paying attention. The Nebula awards are a popularity contest as judged by people in the industry (authors and possibly editors and publishers as well, i forget the specifics,) while the Hugo awards are a popularity contest as judged by the public.

In theory in both contests the popularity is supposed to be based on the quality of the work. That rule is probably more closely observed for the Nebulas than the Hugos, but in both cases it is impossible to eliminate all personal biases.

I voted in the Hugos and personally found the Vox Day work to be junk, while the other works from the "Sad Puppy Slate" were decent, though not anything i would have considered worth nominating myself. Obviously i agree with the results, but obviously i am also biased like every other human being.

So yes, the Hugos are a popularity contest, as are the Nebulas, the Oscars, the Grammys, and every other reward for artistic achievement that you can think of.

Thanks for posting a link that actually mostly explains the issue. Much more helpful than the summary that posted a link to a huge list of links, and of the ones I clicked, half weren't applicable to the issue, and the other half were just opinion pieces that assumed you were already familiar with the controversy. Horrible editing.

At my local library they have folded the Sci-Fi section in with the general fiction books. Which means I can no longer browse just Sci-Fi books. I am not sure why they did it, but what irks me a bit is that the Mystery section still remain separate.

"At my local library they have folded the Sci-Fi section in with the general fiction books. Which means I can no longer browse just Sci-Fi books. I am not sure why they did it, but what irks me a bit is that the Mystery section still remain separate."

"At my local library they have folded the Sci-Fi section in with the general fiction books. Which means I can no longer browse just Sci-Fi books. I am not sure why they did it, but what irks me a bit is that the Mystery section still remain separate."

That sounds mysterious. You should investigate.

It's probably the fault of some old guy who dresses as a monster or ghost and who'll get away with it if us meddling kids don't stop him.

Sad thing. After Paolo Bacigalupi won all the awards below he discovered that you make much writing SF, and now writes Young Adult novels

The Windup Girl is a biopunk science fiction novel, written by Paolo Bacigalupi and published by Night Shade Books on September 1, 2009. The novel was named as the ninth best fiction book of 2009 by TIME magazine,[1] and as the best science fiction book of the year in the Reference and User Services Association's 2010 Reading List.[2] This book is a 2010 Nebula Award[3] a

It's different. Although one of the things that's a little annoying is that while he implies that a lot of the damage to the world's food supplies may be deliberate and ongoing, he never has anyone actually say that or even grumble, accuse or try and fight back. The closest approximation is where Thailand isolates itself and does internal purges.

The kink-spring concept is original, but nobody seems to have a clue about other renewable energy sources. He apparently never saw the YouTube video where someone t

By reading the official category definition for the body overseeing the particular award. For the Hugos, see the World Science Fiction Society Constituion Section 3.3 http://www.wsfs.org/bm/const-2... [wsfs.org]

If there's one thing I've learned reading all kinds of award-winning books, is that more often than not, the award is a big warning that the book is shit, or pompous, or written specifically to woo often sophisticated, pedantic jury members into giving the award.

In short, I usually go for stuff that hasn't been awarded certain kinds of awards. The Hugo certainly seems overrated these days, and has been for many years.

The Hugo awards come from the audience. The audience is a bunch of drooling retards. Also, I'm surprised XKCD got the graphic story thing.

Seriously, Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games are largely a joke. And they're bringing out Dragon Tattoo movies. You won't see Gateway or The Gap Cycle as a dramatic long-form series (it's too fucking massive to run as a set of movies); I would love to produce The Gap Cycle as a scifi-drama-epic narrative in an opera-style, as the prose won't translate to modern

Your post only shows that you're too stupid to understand that average can refer to mean, median, or any other central tendency metric (not to mention that, since intelligence is roughly normally distributed, mean and median in this particular case happen to be the same).
Gotta love it when someone tries to show how smart they are by criticism, only to crash and burn, the way you did with this post.

I wholeheartedly agree - I picked up a collection of Hugo Award winners, as edited by Isaac Asimov - I found the writing incredibly pretentious and the stories almost seemed to take a back seat. They were a massive disappointment to me.

I picked up a collection of Hugo Award winners, as edited by Isaac Asimov - I found the writing incredibly pretentious and the stories almost seemed to take a back seat. They were a massive disappointment to me.

Hugo winners are often incredible stories - I've read a lot of them, and while some of them are crap, a lot of them are very, very good. Really, it depends a lot on the year they were written - if the collection you read was from the 70s, then I can see why you thought they were crap; the popular scifi writing style in in that decade was... well... pretentious. It's also possible that you just don't like the same kinds of stories Asimov likes - as editor, the stories were chosen by him.

I really liked Europa Report and I recommend it to sci-fi fans. But the criticisms against that movie were well placed, and Best Dramatic Presentation? If anything, the movie was intentionally downplaying the inherent drama of their predicament in order to keep the movie grounded in a more documentary format. Sci-fi fans should definitely check out Europa Report, but I don't think it would have won here.

But I found much of the tension to be very artificial. For example (spoilers ahoy!), when Bullock and Clooney reach ISS, both being tethered with a rope. And are no longer moving. Yet, Bullock is forced to cut the rope, because of... what, exactly? (yes, their characters had names, no longer remember them)

The problem here for a lot of people is it breaks them out of their suspension of disbelief. We've established this as a representation of a fairly realistic world when something we know wouldn't happen happens.

If we established earlier that this was a world with its own physics then we'd accept it.

True. But what if the object that they're connected to is moving? What's to say that ISS wasn't rotating in such a way as to create force?

Now ISS has various gyroscopes and thrusters to keep it oriented. However, it appears that many of the ISS systems were turned off and/or damaged, which means that those thrusters or gyroscopes may not have been working. So ISS may have also had some spin to it, considering that it and the Soyuz had been hit by debris.

It's perfectly fine to have non-realistic physics in science fiction. It just needs some justification or explanation. Future super-tech that hasn't been invented, or a revolution in our understanding of the universe. This is a good thing: It lets you introduce a 'magic box' like a perfect lie detector or an artificial intelligence and then examine the impact it would have. Or it can just serve as the backdrop to a more conventional story, like a space opera - just throw in some vague mumbling about the hyperdrive, it doesn't matter how the thing is supposed to work so long as it gets the characters where they need to go.

But Gravity doesn't have that excuse. It's supposed to be realistic. It's supposed to be near-future. That sets certain constraints. For a layperson it might be acceptable for an astronaut to jump out the ISS and achieve an orbital intersection and velocity match by eye with a distant station - but for anyone who knows the slightest thing about space travel, or has played Kerbal Space Program, this as as glaring a violation of the established rules of the setting as if she'd cobbled together a teleporter from the wreckage.

It hadn't occurred to me to nominate it, and unfortunately didn't occur to enough other people, so it missed the short list for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form by about 3 votes (usually only the top 5 nominees get onto the ballot, occasionally 6 if there's a tie or fewer than 5 if not enough works meet the "5% of nominations" threshold.)

An actual astronaut, in space, performing a classic science-fiction-themed song, named after one of the most influential SF movies? It so totally belonged on the bal

It's actually several thousand frames that play out a sequence of events. It was notable both because of the unique presentation (most frames, particularly the early ones, change only subtly) and because of the details that go into establishing the otherwise unexplained setting.

That's only part of the story. The forum [xkcd.com] is where all the real action was/is. There was/is a religion of sorts. Complete with popes, prophets and pilgrimages. And lingo. (Chirping mustard! The OTT is seaish. and cancercoffeesemenbabies). I assume it is still going, but I refuse to check. I lost a lot of time in that forum, and I had to make a clean break. There were many people whose RL relationships were strained because of this. People were up every hour checking the latest ONG. For those of you willing t

Wow, just wow. That was the worst summation of the situation that didn't devolve into outright fantasies. Vox Day was only even tangentially involved to help prove the point of Sad Puppies II.http://monsterhunternation.com... [monsterhunternation.com]

>If Americans can find the courage to consciously reject the myth of the melting pot and expel the Mexicans from the American Southwest, the Arabs from Detroit and the Somalis from Minneapolis, they can reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture.

or maybe

>EuropeÃ(TM)s demise is all but assured, thanks to them, as womenÃ(TM)s individual choices taken in the collective have stricken European society and brought on successive waves of feminist-friendly Islamic immigration by

I've read some of what he's written on his blog, and I am more than satisfied that he's a racist, sexist, homophobic dipshit who completely deserves all the opprobrium he receives. What's worse, he's one of those crazy religious fanatics who twists the bible into excuses to hate people, like the Westborough folks. As a human, I find him utterly contemptible.

Nevertheless, if I'd been voting on the Hugos this year, I would have judged his work on its own merit. I still find Orson Scott Card an outstanding wri

Correia seemed to be trying to rudely bully a lot of people to make it clear that he doesn't like all of you politically correct liberal liberal liberals out there in the publishing business. He was the one who brought Beale in to offend anybody who's even vaguely possible to offend; I don't like people doing that at parties I'm attending. (He also ran a campaign slate for nominees, which is pretty much not done (except every publisher saying "hey, vote for all OUR stuff.") I assume they did that together, but I don't know either of them. Their other main slate-member was Torgerson, who writes Mormonish mil-sci-fi. (He also threw the Schlock Mercenary comic in as a graphic work, which I found quite enjoyable back when it was originally nominated but which wasn't eligible as a 2013 work, so I thought that was tacky.)

Beale's fiction wasn't, in my opinion, Hugo quality, but it would have been ok in a pulp magazine back when those were the dominant form. His personal writings are so creepy that I can see why anybody willing to vote for his work would get criticism; reminds me of the "Vote for the Crook" election in Louisiana a few years back. Correia's writing is entertaining, in a mostly cartoonish way, and I'm ok with that. Not super deep, moderately fun if you like the stuff. Torgerson's work was so utterly soulless I ranked it below Beale's.

I am a big Scalzi fan and have loved every bit of his fiction that I have read - except for Redshirts. So I don't get it either, but a lot of people love it. A TV show will come of it and that escapes me as well. Apparently we are just not in touch with something a lot of other people see in it.

Guess you and I are on opposite sides of the fence about Scalzi. I read Old Man's War, and while it was well done, it didn't grab me at all. Most military sci-fi is pretty soulless. Redshirts started out looking like it was going to be a fun Star Trek parody, but then went into a bunch of totally new directions. It wasn't my first choice of the nominees that year, but it way exceeded my expectations.

Good science fiction is (almost) ALWAYS about people, and how they react in an environment that is altered by a technology, or an event, or some other external influence that simply wasn't imaginable until our understanding of the universe progressed (the science part of the fiction). While there are some examples that differ from this, if you take a look through your favorite stories, they almost all conform to this pattern.

In this case, it's an exploration of what happens to someone who is in orbit during an event that leads to Kessler Syndrome. I'm not saying the film deserved to win, but I think complaining that "this isn't science fiction" is decidedly unwarranted.

Gravity isn't science fiction. We actually do send people into space, and that kind of disaster could sort of happen.

"Could happen"--but hasn't. That's what makes it science fiction. "Speculative science" is absolutely not a requirement of SF, and "predictions of the future" is basically what it was. It was at least as plausible a prediction as something like Heinlein's "...If This Goes On". And "fantasy elements", in a lot of people's opinions, loosely including mine, are never an element of actual science fiction.

Space exploration and research still falls basically in the domain of science these days, even though it's a

How many times has Correia made the NYT bestseller list? Got a source for both of their sales numbers?

You're a whining "victim" who wants everyone to see how trod-upon you are. However, we don't hate you because of your politics (despite how very badly you want it to be so), we hate you because you're an asshole.